I’ve been toying around with a new hypothesis. Here it is:

Formality in business is dying.

Now I am not talking about Blue Jeans Friday and Bring Your Pet to Work Day all of the sudden cropping up everywhere. I’ve seen very formally-run businesses where people showed up in jeans with their dogs or whatever. So much superficial informality.

What I’m talking about is a fundamental shift of business culture and management practices from formal to informal in many innovative companies. What do I mean? Let’s take a step back.

Here are two of the ways Merriam-Webster defines the word formal.

- relating to or involving the outward form, structure, relationships, or arrangement of elements rather than content
- having the appearance without the substance

That first definition of formality stands out for me as a perfect description of almost every formal business practice I have ever encountered. “Relating to or involving the outward form, structure, relationship of arrangement of elements rather than the content” (emphasis mine).

Organizational charts. Job titles. Performance reviews. Operational reviews. Strategic planning projects.

In your experience, do these things usually reflect the man-on-the-street reality of the business? Or are they an attempt to impose structure on things that do their best to defy it?

The irony is that, while most formal business practices are attempts to manage the complexity of business by defining structure, they usually fail miserably to capture the true complexity of business. They focus on the structure rather than the real content—and they usually don’t even get that right.

In my experience, most business practices that attempt to formalize structure are about as successful as attempts to construct buildings out of clouds. By the time we finish the plan, everything has already changed beyond recognition.

[Read the rest of this post on opensource.com]

Wow. Yesterday was an interesting day. It started with a coffee meeting with a local architect who’s a friend. We discussed how the architecture industry is getting hammered. Then I ran into an old friend who’s a photographer. We discussed how the photography industry is getting hammered. Then a friend posted a link on Facebook about how the advertising industry is getting hammered. Then another friend posted a link on Facebook about how the design industry is getting hammered.

Oy vey. I feel like going out and getting hammered.

On the other hand, I’m positively optimistic. If businesses are to compete, they must become more innovative. If they are to become more innovative, they must become more creative. If they are to become more creative, they must begin to appreciate creativity better. They have to value creative culture and creative people. They have to learn to identify, recruit, hire, train, manage, sustain and retain creative people.

But we, the grasshoppers, have to let go of some old baggage ourselves. If we continue to battle 20th centuries bogeymen, we’re going to lose 21st century opportunities.

In one of the Facebook posts I noted above, the writer (a damned talented guy) closes his argument with this:

Well, this time let’s dissolve back to the year 1519. (Wavy lines, wavy lines.) Cortez and his marauders have come to pillage and destroy Mexico. The way forward is unknown. The size of the enemy, unknown. So to rally his men, the dude gives a pep talk of just three words. “Burn the ships.”

He removes the option of going back.

What if you burned your ships? What if you had to advertise a brand and you couldn’t use TV and print? Don’t ask me. I don’t know the answer. But I do know it’s probably time to burn the ships and step into the jungle.

My advice? If you see ships, you’re hallucinating; there are no ships. They sunk a decade ago.

Look at the opportunity ahead of you. The significant business opportunity of embracing creativity, design and innovation. Figure out how to multiply your skills and talents— share, engage, lead— become a catalyst. The artifact is dead; be the ‘experience’ you talk about so much.

And quit whining.

“Who are YOU? said the Caterpillar
“I hardly know, sir, just at the present–
at least I know who I WAS
when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have been changed
several times since then.”

I’m not a fan of the traditional ’strategic’ thinking. My experience is business managers haven’t much of a clue about what strategy is. I know that sounds arrogant, but ask someone about their strategy and they’ll hand you a spreadsheet of their plan— often little more than an extended ‘to do’ list. That’s if you’re lucky. Worse, they’ll force you to sit through their slide deck. You know it’s true.

What does impress, however, is how the top layers of most organizations present the very idea of strategy— as if it’s something mysterious; something that requires their particular level of genius. And pay grade. Everyone else’s job is to be the ant and implement. Because traditional strategic thinking follows the laws of gravity and, like sewage, flows downhill.

Implementation must be measured, of course. How can the ant be held accountable if its actions aren’t measured? And, since Peter Drucker warns us that strategy and structure must be aligned, if the ant fails in its efforts to implement, then the organization must either re-org or re-tool. It stands to reason. Because the strategy and those who created it can’t possibly be at fault. To question this ‘truth’ is to risk your future at most organizations.

This isn’t to say that planning and measuring aren’t important. They have their appropriate place. But we’ve gotten to the point in the business world to where the tail is wagging the labrador. To question measurement or accountability is an act of blasphemy and high treason.

Such dogmatic acceptance of machine-age business thinking models has a severe limiting effect on organizations who have a strategic need to innovate. Such devotion to these traditional beliefs may advance a business leader’s short-term individual agenda, but will seldom advance the mission of an innovative business. Organizations who create such cultures will struggle to recruit, hire and retain great creative talent.

At New Kind, we believe that innovative organizations compete stronger when they have a mission. A real mission. Something you can understand. Something you can see. Hold onto. Bite into. Something you can join.

Once you have a true mission, goals can be set. Simple goals. Measurable goals, perhaps. Inspirational goals. If you do it right “a-man-on-the-moon-before-the-end-of-the-decade” type goals. Then the next question follows: what is your strategy for meeting your mission.

But first you must know who you are. And this is the most important strategic question for innovative organizations— those whose leadership possess the courage and self-awareness to answer it.

“Who are you?”

For the second half of the 20th century, business leaders aggressively pursued a strategy based on becoming the most efficient, most productive player in their industry. In an age where many companies were bureaucratic and lazy, out-of-shape competitors were numerous. Those companies who were first or best in advancing the most well-oiled, machine-like structures often enjoyed a distinct competitive advantage.

But one can argue that productivity is now more of a commodity. Fat organizations are hardly the norm. The competitive landscape has changed.

When conditions change, strategy must change. And as Peter Drucker warned, so, too, must structure. If the ‘machine model’ is to be replaced, what will replace it?

Many of us believe the answer lies in innovation. Not innovation as technology. Or innovation in the form of walled-off ‘experts’ in a sterile laboratory. But open innovation. Culturally-driven creativity. True entrepreneurial activity. Practical, dynamic innovation, strategic at the core.

It makes sense then that executives and their human resources departments should employ a strategy to compete based on their ability to identify, recruit, hire, train and retain an innovative— more creative— work force. The bad news is that virtually everything businesses and business leaders do in terms of management and corporate leadership, research shows, is the polar opposite of those things they should do to build a creative work force. And the experience of this misalignment is devastating to creative workers.

Creative people are different. They insist upon being different.

In Aesop’s classic fable— The Ant and the Grasshopper— the ant works hard all summer putting up grain for the winter. The grasshopper plays and enjoys the summer. He concentrates on fun and entertainment. Music, wine and love command his attention– he celebrates the summer feasting on the fresh grass that’s freely available.

Winter comes soon enough and the grasshopper finds himself at the ant’s door begging for shelter and food. The ant explains that he barely has enough to get his family through the winter. He enjoyed the lovely music all summer, but he can’t help his friend. The grasshopper freezes to death. And Aesop warns us “It’s better to prepare for the necessities of life.”

It is easy to view creative workers as grasshoppers– unconcerned with the realities of business competition, lacking commitment to the hard work required to compete and having no respect for the waste of unproductive and inefficient play. Unfortunately, accepting this point of view causes a serious conundrum for business leaders in need of innovation. This leader has to adopt a different point of view.

That should be easy. Because the truth is that creative workers are, in fact, ants. When they are engaged, no teams or individuals work harder, less selfishly or more passionately than creative workers. In a sense, they are really /ants/ who think they’re grasshoppers.

But when creative workers are not engaged, no amount of executive proclamations, management control initiatives, structural re-orgs, documented processes, metrics, money, company events, or internal ‘communications’ campaigns will motivate them.

Sticks and carrots don’t work on grasshoppers. Even the fear of death doesn’t motivate them. Because they know a secret– Aesop’s grasshopper would have been fine if he could have just caught a flight to Rio.

When creative workers are not engaged, they will leave; the best and most talented exiting first. And they will start again somewhere else.

In the classic book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Jack Trout and Al Ries, there is an ongoing thematic—the overwhelming value of being #1 in a market. The reasoning? It is extremely hard to dislodge the company that captures a position in the minds of target customers first.

From a brand positioning perspective, I often return to a similar principle I call the 1-2 punch.

The 1-2 punch is simple:

Punch 1: Grow the market

Punch 2: Lead the market you grow

Punch 1: You may compete in a frame of reference where you are not #1, but throwing punch 1 means putting your energy into creating or growing a different competitive frame of reference that didn’t exist in the minds of your audience before.

Punch 2: This is where you must really capitalize on the benefits of being an early mover in a market. If you throw punch one (grow the market), but do not effectively land punch 2 (lead the market you grow), you may find yourself in a world of hurt. Let’s look at a few examples:

[Read the rest of this post on Dark Matter Matters]

I drive a Toyota Highlander. The Hybrid. I once detested SUVs but bit the bullet a couple of years ago when my son began playing on a travel hockey team. Those 200+ mile weekend trips and a huge equipment bag changed my world view. The hybrid helps me rationalize the decision. But, I must admit— recall and all— I love my Highlander.

One thing I love is the GPS. It makes use of a map provided on a CD available when I bought the car two and a half years ago. As good as the map is, it is out-of-date and incomplete. Occasionally I’ll look at the map and see that the illustrated roads have disappeared and my car appears to be traveling through space like a triangular spacecraft from the original Asteroids video game. I am a modern day Lewis or Clark. I love it when that happens.

Maps are like plans. They’re great when they tell us where we want to go and what we want to do. But things change. Conditions change. Needs change. New options reveal themselves. We have to be prepared to fly into the unknown.

Recently, Peter Bregman blogged about this in Harvard Business Review— Don’t Get Distracted By Your Plan. He relates a lesson he learned getting lost hiking a trail:

… a dangerous thing happens when we follow a trail: we stop paying attention to the environment. Since the trail is so easy to follow, we allow our minds to wander and neglect to observe where we are.

Then we forge ahead, moving with speed and purpose, right to the point where we look up and realize, like I did that day, that the environment around us is no longer recognizable. Our focus blinded us.

We live in a time when our competitive environment can change so quickly and profoundly that it means blindly following a plan can be a very risky business behavior. Maps, plans and spreadsheets are only valuable when they are in service to people who have somewhere to go— not when those people are slaves to the plans.

As we create organizational culture, we have to make sure that our work forces are prepared and comfortable looking up from their plans, evaluating the environmental changes that are occurring around them, and adjusting their path.

When I was at Red Hat, I sometimes got questions from folks who wanted to know the secret to Red Hat’s brand success. First off, I’d always say you don’t grow a $1 billion technology company on brand alone. We sold great products. We treated our customers and developers well. We had a revolutionary business model. Those kinds of things are the bedrock of a successful brand.

But if I was to point to one “secret” thing I think had a big impact on the brand it would be a very simple one:

We said the same thing. Over and over. For years.

For me personally, sometimes I said things so many times I was just as sick of hearing myself as others were.

When people would come to me and ask if they could make a tan hat to give away at tradeshows rather than a red one, I would always repeat: “But we are Red Hat.” We brand folks would always be the ones to bring up the company mission, values, and culture. We’d steer conversations back toward the open source way when they went astray. When my colleagues and I would speak about the culture and brand in orientation, we’d tell the same stories, show the same videos of Bob Young and Matthew Szulik to new employees year after year after year.

When it comes to brand positioning, the biggest mistake you can make is to invest your time, money, and energy in discovering your optimal brand position… and then give up on it before it has a chance to do its magic. Building a great brand has to be done over time and, to paraphrase Jeff Bezos of Amazon, there are no shortcuts.

I’ve worked with a lot of creative types over the years, and most of them love to come up with new ideas. Heck we all do. But sometimes the thing that makes you stand out when everyone else is saying something new is to say something… well… old.

[Read the rest of this post on Dark Matter Matters]

I love The New York Times, the best newspaper in the world. There is no greater pleasure than sitting out on the patio on a Sunday morning, reading The New York Times, and learning.

I stress the word learning because there are so few places left in our world where true discovery happens. Most of the time, marketers, computers, and even our friends are showing us more of what we already know we like, rather than introducing us to things we have never seen or heard of before.

In the pages of The New York Times, I can be introduced to people, places, events, ideas I would have never found on my own. Every day I read The Times I learn something new. The paper expands my understanding of the world rather than reflecting back to me the understanding I already have.

This is an incredibly valuable service. It is a service that very few media companies in the world still provide (my local paper, the Raleigh News and Observer, rarely does these days, sadly).

Yet, the ongoing conversation about how to solve the financial issues of The New York Times revolves around fixing the business model for newspapers. Most experts say the model is fundamentally broken, and a report released last week by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism doesn’t have a lot of good news for the future of journalism as a whole.

From my vantage point, the answer to fixing The New York Times will not come from exploring a revolutionary business model. It will come from a revolutionary brand, culture, and community model. Let me explain.

[Read the rest of this post on Dark Matter Matters]

Last week, my friend Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an article about Jaron Lanier’s negative comments regarding open textbooks. At almost very same time, I happened to stumble upon an article Jaron wrote back in 2006 criticizing Wikipedia.

The common theme is Jaron taking issue with what he calls “online collectivism,” “the hive mind,” and even “digital Maoism” (ouch!). You might call this same concept “crowdsourcing” or “the wisdom of crowds.” It’s all in the eye of the beholder, but the guy clearly does not have much love for wikis or the works of collective wisdom they create.

So I had to ask myself: Why so negative, Jaron?

Is Jaron really a hater of free culture, as Greg claims in his article? Is he an enemy of the open source way? Or is he just a smart dude warning us about the risks of taking the wisdom-of-crowds concept too far?

Fortunately for us, Jaron published a book earlier this year entitled You Are Not A Gadget. So I took a few hours and read it last week to see if I could answer some of these questions.

At times, the book is scary smart, with precise analysis from a man who clearly questions everything, and is in a better intellectual position to do so than most (the section on social media and its redefinition of friendship is especially interesting).

At other times it read like a college philosophy term paper. And occassionally, especially toward then end, it devolved into nearly unintelligeble (at least by me) ravings about things like “postsymbolic communication” and “bachelardian neoteny” (Michael Agger’s review in Slate calls him out for this too).

But wait! Right near the beginning of the book, I found this paragraph:

“Emphasizing the crowd means deemphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, moblike behaviors.”

Hey… I kinda agree with that…

[Read the rest of this post on opensource.com]

Last fall, a group of researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) released a study showing an abrupt leveling off in the number of editors and edits to Wikipedia, starting in about 2007.

There is a great summation of the findings in a set of posts by Dr. Ed H Chi, Lead Scientist at the PARC Augmented Social Cognition group here, here, here, and here.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few months about what might be causing the slowing rate of contributions, as have many others. I particularly liked Niel Robertson’s post last week on the Enterprise Irregulars site.

Niel’s thesis is that Wikipedia has failed to continue to develop innovative ways to motivate its community, falling behind as other communities and companies have implemented more creative new techniques. Niel goes on to identify seven types of motivation for crowdsourcing (yes, I still dislike that word) efforts, of which he says Wikipedia is only using a couple.

I think he is on to something. But Wikipedia is operating at a scale that dwarfs almost every other crowdsourcing effort in history. It takes a massive bureaucracy of editors and administrators to keep the whole thing going.

And if traditional bureaucracies (like those in governments and large companies) tend to stifle innovation, what happens in a bureaucracy where the bureaucrats aren’t getting paid and aren’t getting any recognition for their efforts?

From my point of view, this is Wikipedia’s next great challenge:

How does it convince the world to love and recognize its contributors?

[Read the rest of this post on opensource.com]